STATEN ISLAND, NY -- Talk about a chef that’s hands on: On a final visit to Trends in Great Kills, chef/owner Mike Cappucci successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on a customer dining on the other side of the room. Impressive.

Actually, Cappucci mostly works the front-of-the-house these days, having passed along much of the food execution to Mike Basilli, his chef de cuisine.

Trends is a rather narrow restaurant, about a 40-seater, with a blonde-wood-on-buff decor. There is a bar to the left just past a glass, curtain wall facade, and a stark dining area further back. The space is uncluttered and clean but otherwise unremarkable.

The menu here features a brand of familiar American cooking best described as dressed-up tavern fare. It is a trend, so to speak, that Staten Islanders appreciated deeply in the ‘80s and might recall at places like the defunct Armory Inn (soon to be Pepper Jack Grill) in Castleton Corners and the original Elm Park Inn.

Food at this Great Kills place is fairly simple, clearly (and happily) made from scratch as well as hearty with lots of stick-to-the-ribs combinations. This kitchen’s brand of food could very much appeal to borough appetites — there’s lots of it to go around, an unabashed application of salted butter, and double-doses on the likes of mashed potatoes and hand-cut French fries. It is casual fare — fun, perhaps, if you are not calorie-counting.

Salads like Caesar (straight-forward and topped with fried calamari) and the Strawberry and Ricotta were decent. Arugula Salad flecked with almond slivers came three different ways over three visits, albeit with the common theme of being heavily garlicked. For appetizers, Trends Sample Platter included a one-dimensional display of sliced fresh mozzarella with roasted red peppers, breaded and fried shrimp, a couple of hand-cut mozzarella sticks and mozzarella en carozza triangles.

Soups were good particularly a chunky cream of chicken soup thickened with a young roux. Baked Littlenecks were tasty.

Herb Crusted Pork Chop was excellent — a mammoth, brined piece of meat stuffed with provolone cheese — as were tender, Blackened Baby Back Ribs and a dry-rubbed version. Lemon Chicken with Scallions was mediocre as was the Wild Mushroom Chicken, a stringy couple of breasts which sported a rather good mushroom sauce.

Choice steaks (aged Texas T-Bone, Seasoned Ribeye) were spot-on — even when getting packaged into overly-complicated presentations, the kind of treatment that could destroy the outcome of a dish.

For instance, Bayou Steak and Shrimp combo included a 16-ounce blackened ribeye cooked to requested medium. Chopped, chilled salad packed on top — coarsely cut red onions, cherry tomatoes and fresh basil — added little to the package. From the specials one night, an au poive ribeye was smothered with a cream-touched brown sauce. We modified this by asking the kitchen to go easy on the blue cheese (a lesson learned from ordering a similar item, Blue Cheese Ribeye Steak, a few weeks prior from the regular menu). The meat arrived cooked to temp despite the heated sauce and cracked black peppercorn application.

For dessert, find housemade items like deep-fried Oreos and chocolate chimichangas (ooofa) — items on which we passed. Rice pudding, however, was worth the calories.

At Trends, the servers are lovely and, in their casual, gentle way, try quite hard to please the customers. And it was refreshing to hear their knowledge on details with the menu and restaurant (i.e. “The chef uses Russet potatoes to make the fries, etc.)

I do feel there is a rough edge to the cooking here, that there could be a little more finesse, that the menu selections and plate presentations could be freshened up (i.e. tidier markings of balsamic glaze as opposed to a plate rim marred by balsamic graffiti, neater displays on salads as in a concasse of tomato or finely diced onion). Still, Trends is a likable restaurant on many levels. And Mike Cappucci is very likable guy, a restaurant owner whose sincerity and mild manner ultimately sells the dining experience.